Who’s on First in Syria, Mr. President?

Barack Obama has no idea and neither do members of Congress or his royal highness, one Vladimir Putin. As they say in baseball, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. You tell me whom President Obama, John Boehner, John McCain and Bill Kristol were going to bomb. And at what collateral damage? Absolute folly best describes what this misguided foursome had in mind for America. Listen to Rand Paul’s rebuttal to the recent Obama meanderings on Syria. Rand succinctly lays out the rotten options for the U.S. Here The Wall Street Journal outlines the current sorry state of affairs in Syria. It’s a head scratcher.

“It’s a three-front war,” a U.S. official said of the FSA rebels’ fight: They face the Assad regime, forces from its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, and now the multinational jihadist ranks of ISIS.

Brigade leaders of the FSA say that ISIS, an Iraqi al Qaeda outfit whose formal name is the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, has dragged them into a battle they are ill-equipped to fight.

Some U.S. officials said they see it as a battle for the FSA’s survival.

In recent months, ISIS has become a magnet for foreign jihadists who view the war in Syria not primarily as a means to overthrow the Assad regime but rather as a historic battleground for a larger Sunni holy war. According to centuries-old Islamic prophecy they espouse, they must establish an Islamic state in Syria as a step to achieving a global one.

Al Qaeda militants from central command in Pakistan and Pakistani Taliban fighters have also set up operational bases in northern Syria, people familiar with their operations said.

The spread of ISIS illustrates the failure of Western-backed Syrian moderates to establish authority in opposition-held parts of Syria, some of which have been under rebel control for over a year.

The proliferation of the Sunni jihadists and extremists has brought a new type of terror to the lives of many Syrians who have endured civil war in the north. Summary executions of Alawites and Shiites, who are seen as apostates, attacks on Shiite shrines, and kidnappings and assassinations of pro-Western rebels are on the rise.